1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate to a fuser cleaning apparatus and a method of operating a fuser cleaning apparatus for use with an image forming device, in which a contaminated fuser of the image forming device is cleaned by a heating of a heating roller of the fuser while the heating roller is not in motion.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an electro-photographic image forming device, a latent image is formed on a photosensitive drum to which toner is adhered. The toner is developed into a visible image using developer and the visible toner image is then transferred to a print medium, such as paper or a transparency. The image transferred to the print medium is fixed to the print medium by passing the print medium through a fuser. Once the print medium has passed through the fuser, the print medium is discharged from the image forming apparatus.
The fuser applies heat and pressure to the print medium to fix the image to the print medium. To this end, the fuser includes a heating roller to apply heat to the print medium and a pressure roller to apply pressure to the print medium. The heating roller and the pressure roller are provided along a conveyance path of the print medium.
As a result, it is frequently necessary to clean a fuser that becomes contaminated with toner. According to a conventional method of cleaning a fuser, a fusing temperature of the fuser is set to a high preset temperature in a cleaning mode via a heating of the heating roller while rotating the heating and pressure rollers. When the fusing temperature reaches the preset temperature, the medium (i.e., a sheet of paper) is picked up and passed between the heating and pressure rollers to remove melted toner.
The fuser further includes a guide member, which is referred to as a claw, to smoothly discharge media while preventing them from being wound around the photosensitive drum. As the number of sheets of media printed on increases, an increasing amount of toner that attaches to the guide member ends up being fixed to the guide member due to the fusing temperature increases during fusing processes. However, according to the conventional cleaning method, melting toner contaminants on the guide member is difficult since the cleaning operation is performed while the heating roller rotates. Rather, toner contaminants on the heating and pressure rollers may be added to toner contaminants on the guide member.
Thus, the conventional cleaning method is not effective to clean contaminants on the guide member. If the contaminants fixed to the guide member scratch a medium to be discharged, undesired vertical black lines may be printed on the medium and the medium may also be jammed.